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Cannabis is fun and has some medical benefits, like if you're a cancer patient trying to stimulate your appetite, but it also genuinely does lower your IQ.
If you start at 25 or later when you're brain is fully formed, your IQ won't take a permanent hint unless you're a heavy smoker. It will still effect your memory to some degree tho, but that also goes for alcohol and other drugs.
Using in moderation is key.
It can kick off schizophrenia and depersonalization disorder. Here's some really good research on it: https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-podcast/2019/5/1/marijuana-and-mental-health.
I don't think occasional use is a big deal either, any more than a glass of wine, but it isn't great for chronic use.
Granted I was an almost constant user, I maintained a "high" basically from when I woke up until I went to bed at night. It was def a form of self medication, it did help with a lot of ADHD symptoms because rather than getting lazy I would get hyped and very active. Used it that way basically from a little before covid, all through covid, until November of last year. It did affect my work performance, looking back, but I interviewed for that job high, I went to work high most of the time, still got good reviews, raises and a promotion. I was addicted or dependent or whatever term you want to use. But like high functioning I guess.
But in November I crashed hard. Had a complete psychotic break. I thought the government was using 5g to beam mind control beams, an array of numbers containing hidden brainwashing instructions, to make me believe I was this person, when really I was a fake, an android put into this life to do their bidding, they killed the real me and I was the replacement, and this happened all the time, I just happened to pick up on one of their transmissions.
I'm a rational guy, I don't know where this shit came from. I have pages in my notebook documenting it. Luckily my wife is amazing and I was kind of able to talk myself out of it enough to have her convince me and remind me of what was real. Since then I had to quit. I def got some intelligence points back. And I haven't had any more episodes. But damn that scared the shit out of me. I didn't even know it was possible.
On the addiction aspect, the addiction stems from purely psychological, at least in my experience, unlike other drugs like nicotine which is chemical/physical addiction. I've smoked weed and tobacco/vapes, was at one point dependent on weed but was able to quit cold turkey and haven't felt any cravings since.
Nicotine on the other hand is very much a constant battle that I feel like I could relapse at time, just a wiff of second hand smoke is enough to give me very strong withdrawal jitters. Infact, I feel that a heavy contributer of my weed dependency was a transference of my nicotine addiction.
In that sense, targeting mental health issues through therapy and appropriate prescriptions for co-occurring mental health conditions will likely help kick cannabis dependence.
Quitting smoking and vaping is harder, last year was the first time in my life where, after not having a cig in a long time, I was at a thing and people were smoking and I bummed one and it was absolutely disgusting to me. Felt great to hate it tbh.
But in like 13-15 years of habitual smoking I never had a psychotic episode from it.
There's multiple studies that suggests that the psychological dependency is bidirectional where as pre-existing mental disorders can lead to cannabis dependency, cannabis dependency can lead to exacerbation of the pre-existing mental disorders, and excessive use can lead to trigging mental disorders you maybe genetically prone too and commonly psychosis. Psychosis has symptoms overlapping with schizophrenia, however you're symptoms seem a bit extreme for Psychosis. Is there perhaps a history of schizophrenia &/or paranoid personality disorder in your family? If you don't know, perhaps consider looking into it.
I don't know, maybe a proclivity but our family wasn't really the type for diagnosing mh disorders. I had to fight like hell to get my own diagnoses as an adult.